I first knew The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo as the book written by that dead Swedish guy. Which is actually how people have put it at the Bookstore: “I’m looking for that book by the dead Swedish guy.” In fairness, I’m sure there are lots of fine works of fiction or non-fiction by now dead Swedish guys, but honestly? There’s only one dead Swedish author people care about lately: Stieg Larsson.
His death also explains why the author photo on the book is so awful.
Larsson was a left-wing Swedish journalist who began writing mysteries as a hobby. He finished three, and was midway through the fourth (of a projected ten-book cycle) when he died at the age of fifty, in 2004. Titled Män som hatar kvinnor in the original Swedish, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo won a prestigious Glass Key Award. It was first published in the UK in January 2008, and in the U.S. that September.
The book follows protagonists Mikael Blomkvist, a middle-aged disgraced journalist, Lisbeth Salander, a prodigy hacker, through an Agatha Christie style-mystery: the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, a member of a wealthy industrial family, from an isolated island. In addition, there’s a subplot about how exactly Blomkvist went about becoming disgraced, and Salander’s experiences with the Swedish judicial system.
I was at first more than a little reluctant to pick this book up — although I heard lots of great stuff about it, my last experience with a translated Swedish book, Henning Mankell’s The White Lioness, left a sour taste in my mouth (and mind). I eventually caved to pressure, and picked up a paperback copy last weekend. How much did I like it?
The book is 590 pages. I began reading it Monday morning, and I finished it Thursday afternoon, while still working eight hours each day at my Office job, while working three evenings at my part-time job, and while drinking copiously at a farewell party for departing Office mates Tuesday night. On top of all of that, I still managed six hours of sleep a night. I guess what I’m saying is — it’s a real page turner.
Also, I read really fast.
The book is not perfect. There are sections which drag, because Larsson lectures about aspects of Sweden’s guardianship system, and sometimes the translation seems sloppy: for example, a romantic interest refers to Blomkvist as a “toy boy” about a third of the way in (pg. 208, if you must know). However, these faults are easily overlooked — the book is sometimes haunting and spooky, sometimes terrifying, and on occasion, tender and warm hearted. For me, the real satisfaction from the book didn’t come from the resolution of the mystery of Harriet Vanger plot-line, but of Blomkvist’s redemption (which, of course, is tied in with the Vanger plot).
While reading the book, and being more and more aware of the book’s success (the only author to outsell Larsson in 2008? Khaled Hosseini), I feel such an incredible sense of loss for Mr. Larsson. Goodness knows, when I think about “what I want to be when I grow up”, I can remember being in a bookstore as a kid, running my hand along the spines of books, and thinking, “All I want to do is write and publish a book.” I wonder if Mr. Larsson had that same dream? It really is too bad that he died without seeing his works in print, but I guess that’s the artist’s lament, isn’t it? No one knows who you are until you’re dead.
Okay, shake it off. I hope the sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire, is just as captivating. It was released this past Tuesday, and I picked up a copy. If it’s as good as I hope it is, I won’t wait for the American publication of the third book — The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest — I’ll order it from Amazon.uk: it’s being published in England October 1st.
Interestingly, the books have already gotten the movie treatment, and the first was released in Europe this spring. The Swedish trailer is here.
So, you’ve seen Back to the Future, right? Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, a flying DeLorean, and some time-traveling conundrums — notably, a third film which could’ve been avoided if Doc Brown wasn’t a total burnout.
What you may — or may not — know is that the role of Jennifer, Fox’s love interest in the film, was re-cast between the first and second films. Claudia Wells was unavailable to film the second and third films (made back-to-back) because her mother had been diagnosed with cancer, and Elisabeth Shue was hired for the roll. Because the second film begins with the last few minutes of the first, director Robert Zemeckis refilmed the entire sequence, with Shue, to maintain continuity.
So some dude, brilliantly, put together this little vid (the first film is on top, the second on bottom) to show how old-school movie makers do stuff (today, they’d just’ve used some CGI program to stick Shue’s head on Wells’s body).
I noticed some mutterings on Twitter today and found a Gawker article about the behavior of American Apparel’s CEO Dov Charney, who is allegedly demanding that store managers send in photos of store employees so that he can determine who among them are unattractive … and other them fired. Apparently, instead of blaming, I don’t know, the shitty economy for plummeting sales, Charney is blaming ugly or so-so employees.
Yeah, he’s not just a beauty himself, he’s a thinker, too:
Summer is supposed to be a great sales season for AA. Needless to say, with the state of the economy, sales haven’t been going so well. Dov usually gets on the conference calls and talks to people, but one week, he went on a huge tirade and made stores that weren’t doing well send in group photos. Why, you ask? He made store managers across the country take group photos of their employees so that he could personally judge people based on looks. He is tightening the AA ‘aesthetic,’ and anyone that he deems not good-looking enough to work there, is encouraged to be fired. This is blatant discrimination based on looks.
I guess what most bothers me about this, is that a hard working, but unattractive employee, can be dismissed by corporate decree, whereas, y’know, the beauty queen who texts at the register and throws a fit when she has to clean up her area, gets to stay working. And this for two reasons:
1. I don’t buy into the “hard work equals success” myth. I do believe that success is usually earned by hard work, but I don’t believe that just by being hard working one can find success — there are so many other factors that go into it. However, I do believe, especially in a retail environment, that barring some company wide closure (think: Circuit City), hard work will earn you the right to keep your job: now, I guarantee you, that even in the biggest retail stores (like Target, or Walmart), management knows exactly who their best workers are — you can flirt and preen all you want, but when you’re calling out twice a week, and when you’re lazying around forcing other people to pick up your slack, management notices. And when corporate says, “Hey, fire five staff.” You can bet they’re not going to fire the people picking up the lazy person’s slack — because brown nosing only goes so far in retail. And yet, here are these folks, at risk of losing their jobs over their appearance, not their work ethic. That’s some BS.
2. I do not consider myself attractive. I’m pretty plain, actually, and, when I’m not shaving my head bald, I’ve got male pattern baldness. Also, y’know the joke about how people’s bodies are six packs or keggers? I’m totally the latter. Hey, there’s more of me to love, but I hide my pain behind a smile. Oh, also, I wear glasses that are eight years old and are far too large. The point being: I’m so very glad the Bookstore isn’t American Apparel, and that Dov Charney is not our CEO. If it was, I would probably get called into the GM’s office one day, “Hey, I’ve got to let you go.”
I wouldn’t need to ask, but I probably would: “Am I a bad employee?” I like to think I’m not: I rarely call out (I called out Monday last week because of tremendous foot pain, and that was probably the first time I’d called out since October). I’m at work on time, with a smile on my face, and I try to engage as many customers as I can during the time I’m working. I’m often willing to clock in early, or come in on my days off to cover holes in the shift. I hate working the register, though.
Anyway, I’m writing too much: I’m just going to sum up with a quote from the letter sent to Gawker:
He’s asking for a class-action lawsuit and i hope that when it rains, it rains hard.
As it happens, it’s pouring right now. Outside. Real rain, I mean, not lawsuit rain.
I first knew The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
